The Golden Locket (Unbreakable Trilogy, Book 2) (13 page)

A weak, addicted loser.
Pierre’s bitter words echo distantly in my ears.

‘We’ve already come a long way, partly thanks to you,
signorina
. Look at me.’ He pulls my hands away from my eyes. He kisses the tip of my nose. ‘He can’t hurt you or shut you out, OK? This is between him and me.’

I nod wearily. Pierre is a shifting tectonic plate under our feet. I pick up my spoon and press it into the fragile hillock of meringue on my plate. I tap it and thin cracks spider down it, like Humpty Dumpty’s head. Raspberry mess spills out of it. Me and my big mouth.

‘I don’t think he likes me.’

Gustav’s chocolate mousse is halfway to his mouth but to my astonishment he starts laughing.

‘Funny girl. Sometimes you get it so wrong. The most brilliant thing is he’s grudgingly admitted that he does like you. Admires you, even. And if he wasn’t with Polly now, which incidentally makes him doubly family, who could blame him if he was half in love with you?’

I inhale sugary crumbs of meringue. ‘That’s the craziest thing I ever heard!’

‘Yes, because who could ever do anything by halves when it came to you?’

Gustav pats me between the shoulder blades as I start to cough.

‘Anyway, enough about that. We’re going to meet at the Library Hotel’s rooftop bar next week.’

I shove too much gooey meringue into my mouth and it sticks to the palate, even the insides of my teeth.

‘That’s great. Just the two of you. You need to have a heart-to-heart.’

‘Oh, no, he wants you there, Serena. He has a proposal for you.’

I can only grimace awkwardly as I try to chew through the sugar, glad of the excuse to say nothing. I down an entire glass of wine in one gulp to wash away the meringue. Gustav’s face is so open just now, his black eyes so bright. He spoons in his pudding like a little boy at a birthday party, happy that he has taken big strikes towards his long-lost brother.

‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’ He beckons to the waiter, leans across and kisses me lingeringly, a new and precious habit of his. ‘I want to get home and celebrate my girlfriend’s burgeoning successes. This is going to be a fabulous year, Serena Folkes.’

It would take a heart of stone not to enter into the spirit of it. The other diners watch us through the flickering candlelight as we stand up. Gustav takes my leather jacket from the waiter and helps me into it, first one bare arm, then the other, zipping me up tight, buttoning the fiddly buttons on my green leather gloves, which match my filmy green dress. Running his hands round my hips and bottom to smooth down my skirt. Finally curling the wispy tendrils of hair that have fallen from the loose knot at the back of my head and brushing them away from my hot face.

‘Perfect,’ he says, leading me proudly out of the restaurant.

We must have broken a record for getting through New York traffic. The hired limousine bounced and weaved on its cushiony suspension up Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway, the driver’s screen closed by Gustav as soon as we got into the car so that the invisible chauffeur couldn’t see him running his hands up my bare legs, under my skirt, teasing the uncertainty out of me with his warm, wandering fingers until I was putty in his hands once again.

‘I’ll ravish you right here on this seat if he doesn’t hurry up,’ he muttered, his breath hot and harsh in my hair.

At last we’re back at the apartment building, galloping through the revolving glass doors into the lobby, past the Mount-Rushmore-faced doormen, into the lift, kissing breathlessly, nearly doing it in there, tempted to shock whoever is paid to stare at the CCTV all day, but the lift is too quick so we crash against the huge wooden door of the flat, where’s the key, his hands are still up my dress, somehow we’re getting through the door, putting my camera kit carefully down before falling half on, half off the massive sofa in front of the window.

Gustav rips his jacket and tie off, half unbuttons his shirt, panting hard, spins me round so that I’m facing out of the window, looking down over the waving treetops of Central Park. I think of the enormous chalet back in Lake Lugano, the place where we first had sex. The big sofa in front of the fire, the picture window with its panorama over the flat lake and the craggy mountains, Gustav bending me over the back of the sofa so I could hardly breathe and taking me from behind.

My back is to him now. I want him to take me, any way he wants, but it must be now.

I know Gustav is hard, because I made sure of it in the cab. With superhuman control he is slowing the pace, unpinning my hair first of all so that it falls over my shoulders and back, tickling my skin as it tumbles. He scoops it up in handfuls and buries his nose in it, twisting and curling it round his fingers like a knuckleduster and tugging my head hard so that he can nibble at my bare neck.

His mouth moves over the top of my spine, still tugging at my hair to keep me still, kissing the ladder of vertebrae while his fingers fumble for the zip.

‘Just pull it off, Gustav,’ I hiss over my shoulder, trying to wriggle out of the dress. ‘It’s more of a petticoat. It will just fall away.’

His fingers stop on the zip. My hair is wrapped tight round his knuckles.

‘Did they ask you to join in?’

His voice is low and guttural, like a growl.

‘What? Who?’ For a mad, crazy moment I think he’s referring to Pierre and my cousin Polly. Pulling me into their tangle of limbs, his hands, her hands, his mouth, his hands on me. The picture, and the knowledge I can never confide it to Gustav, gives me an evil kick inside.

Gustav becomes rougher, circles his hands round my neck, up my face, claws his fingers through my hair.

‘The Weinmeyers. In that red dungeon of theirs. Did they want you to come right into the bed with them, make up a full-on threesome?’

‘They’re clients, Gustav.’ I shrug as carelessly as I can. Feel the dress slipping further down. Try to force the other images to slip away with it. ‘I was working, for goodness’ sake. Just like you told me to.’

‘Nobody dares say no to them.’

‘I did. I said no.’

My voice is a kitten’s mew and he doesn’t hear me.

‘Did they want you to join in their sordid little scenario? Tell me!’

‘Yes, they were screwing each other and having a whale of a time doing it. But you’ve shown me worse, remember? The dominatrix videos at your old house in London? Which they intend to bid for, by the way.’

Back he comes, uninvited. Pierre, with his black eyes, his unkind mouth. Asking about the house. Calling me a Rottweiler, a harridan, doubly family. Doubly his.

‘They can have the Baker Street collection for free if that’s what they want!’ Gustav’s voice is a low hiss in my ear. ‘Those films were all artifice. The situation you were in this morning was a real live couple cavorting in their own home!’

‘And how much healthier does that seem, compared with all that other pervy stuff? You told me yourself you hated it!’

His face goes dark. His body goes dead still behind me. I push against it, and he doesn’t move. I clench my fists. This is good. Talking is good. Fantasising is bad.

‘You’re not listening to me, Gustav. There was no danger. No threat, to me or to you for that matter. Yes, they went all the way, but you know something? I was fascinated by it. Like observing animals in the wild. Mrs Weinmeyer may look as if she’s made of porcelain, but she was on top today. She was in charge.’

He winds my hair tight round his fingers again as if it’s a lifeline. ‘And Mrs Weinmeyer’s influence will have made its mark on you, however much you try to deny it.’

I lean back against him. ‘Maybe it’s not such a bad influence. Remember I don’t have any other female role models in my life. Polly hardly counts. She was my partner in crime when we were kids. God, how I used to look forward to her visits to Devon. I used to cry for hours when she’d gone back to London. When she was on a visit we were let loose, we could do whatever we wanted, go to the pub, camp on the beach, hang out with boys, because nobody wanted us in the house.’ I stop for a moment, remembering the crazed look blurring Polly’s lovely blue eyes on New Year’s Eve, the way she clung to Pierre as if he might slither out of reach. ‘I used to think she was the mature one, teaching me the facts of life, but I’ve caught up with her now. And she’s a bit off kilter at the moment.’

‘Well, you know her better than anyone, and I doubt Pierre can sort her out. He’s way too wrapped up in himself at the moment. You’ll have to go out with her, see what’s up.’ He holds me so tight I can’t breathe. ‘I want to be sure you’re not drawn into anything you can’t get out of. People like the Weinmeyers have your reputation in their hands.’

‘I love that you worry about me. But it was fine, really. Harmless.’ I attempt a careless laugh, but I’m not feeling careless now. Pierre is in my head, in the room again. Giving me that same lascivious look as when I was trying to make diplomatic overtures on New Year’s Eve.

‘The Weinmeyers could make you or break you.’

‘You know that they will make me. You were practically in the room with us!’ I decide to brazen this out for the moment. ‘I know you called when I was working at their house, Gustav. So either stalk me or send me out with a minder every day, or let me go about my business.’

‘I know you wouldn’t lie to me. You’re useless at it. There’s this funny kind of grimace that passes over your lovely face when you lie. Even so, I think I’ll come with you in future. It’ll be fun! And if you get into any other kind of trouble, or get sucked in to the point of no return, well, I’ll be there to watch!’ Gustav’s grip on me relaxes very slightly. ‘So. Let’s get into the imagined scenario. Tell me some more about the kinky Weinmeyers.’

I try to face him, but he pushes me against the back of the sofa. I let myself go limp, relish the relief of it. ‘You won’t like it, master. They asked me to sit on the bed.’

‘Go on.’ He waits. He still has my hair tangled in his hand, but he has stopped stroking me. The dress is half unzipped, slipping off my arms. ‘Did they touch you?’

I stretch my arms along the back of the sofa but my fingernails are digging into the palms of my hands. ‘I was kind of off balance and when I toppled onto her she got my top off and she kissed my – she kissed my nipples.’

‘That must be how they get their kicks. Reeling in an innocent bystander.’ He lets out a long, juddering sigh. But when he shifts on his knees behind me on the sofa I feel the unmistakeable shape of his arousal jamming into my lower back.

‘Not bystander exactly. I was a guest in their home. Anyway, Gustav, enough talking. I want to forget about my day.’

He slaps my hands away. ‘What about him? Ernst Weinmeyer. The big I-am. Did he touch you?’

At least he’s unzipping my dress again, and it slithers all the way down my body in a pool of green silk.

‘He tried to. He was still naked on the bed, and he was still hard. I was bent over her, my bottom was up like this.’ I show him, wriggle my now bare bottom at him. ‘He got my jeans halfway down, but he couldn’t get at me. And then I felt his erection and that’s when I felt sick at what was happening and jumped off the bed and told them no dice.’

There’s a pause, and then Gustav loosens his grip on my shoulders. My hair unravels from his fists, and clothes me instead of the dress.

‘That was too close, Serena. And they accepted your rejection? It didn’t blow your commission?’

I shake my head. ‘They assured me they still liked me, still wanted my pictures, still wanted to meet me again to go through the proofs.’

‘Good. Because you’re part of me now. So your success is my success. And vice versa.’

I twist round to face him. He’s grinning at me. Interrogation over. He really does look like king of the heap. I grin back at him, put one finger on his chest and push him down on the sofa. My power is growing.

‘With you by my side nothing’s going to stop me.’

He sighs deeply and falls back against the arm of the sofa, pulling me down with him. ‘You know? Despite all their wealth and power I feel sorry for those Weinmeyers. I feel sorry for anyone who can’t have you like I can.’

We haven’t turned the lights on inside the apartment, but enough light floods in from the city sky to outline his beautiful carved features, calm and relieved again. Life with him really is like battling over a stormy ocean. Gustav and me, one at each end of a boat, sometimes a battleship, sometimes a life-raft, but always tipping, one up, one down.

No. No one else is going to have me.

I see the silver chain hanging out of his pocket and I snatch it up. Something heats up inside me like a filament. The desire to work off this toxic steam. My lover’s dark, chiselled face is in repose. The black hair falling across his eyes as he lies back, his hands resting on my bare legs now, the fight gone out of him.

‘So cocksure, aren’t you, Levi? Shall I rock your world for a moment and stop being a good girl?’

He pushes his hair out of his eyes and gives me one of his straight, arrowing stares. ‘Go on. I dare you.’

I crawl over him like a lizard. He lifts his hands to take my breasts as they dangle above him, but quick as a flash I wrap the silver chain tightly round his wrists, pull his arms up over his head and attach the end of the silver chain to the log-like legs of the coffee table.

‘Silly girl. Think you’re stronger than me?’ But he makes no effort to struggle. Just watches me, in that way that makes me want to dance for him.

‘I’m showing you what Mrs Weinmeyer did to her big strong tycoon of a husband. She handcuffed him, and then she mounted him.’

‘Can a female mount a male?’

His black eyes are glinting but he’s biting down hard on his lower lip to hide the grin. He tugs at the silver chain, but the heavy table doesn’t budge and he’s still attached.

‘Oh, yes, she can. Just like this.’

My voice is soft, mesmeric, as I unbutton the rest of his shirt and yank it down his arms so that his elbows are trapped. I tickle the ends of my hair over his chest, over his stomach, see him shiver in response. Then I undo his trousers, as slowly as I can bear. They rip down along with his boxers and I shudder with glee, my body warming in response as he springs free.